Rosamund Bartlett
‘...outstanding translations of a selection of Chekhov's stories...’ Literary Review
‘Seventeen peerless examples of how much life you can put into a few pages of fiction if you have Chekhov’s economical mind, his eyes and ears, his feel for comedy and his sense of humanity. Chekhov is better known for his plays. But these are small masterpieces of their own, in a revelatory new translation.’ Economist
audioguide and interview for Podularity about translating Chekhov
editor and co-translator with Anthony Phillips, Chekhov: A Life in Letters, Penguin Classics, 2004
‘Penguin have issued the first translation of Chekhov's correspondence uncensored by prudish relatives or myth-building Soviets. Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters rattles with loot.’ David Mitchell, Books of the Year, The Independent, 2004
‘Where A Life in Letters treats Chekhov's biography chronologically, Scenes from a Life arranges it spatially in "geographical" layers. The letters are well translated and the two approaches are complementary; both should appeal to the general reader, as well as to the serious student of Chekhov.’ Times Higher Education Supplement
editor and translator, Chekhov, The Exclamation Mark and Other Stories, foreword by Lynne Truss, Hesperus, 2008, new e-book edition 2024, new paperback edition forthcoming 2025
- e-book sales in the US of the 2024 e-book - contains twenty out of the sixty two stories Chekhov published between the end of December 1885 and the end of June 1886, arranged in chronological order, including the first story he signed with his own name rather than a pseudonym, and both the early and late verrsions of “The Little Joke”
'Rosamund Bartlett translates with finesse and precision', Times Literary Supplement
Victory over The Sun: The World’s First Futurist Opera, co-edited with Sarah Dadswell, University of Exeter Press/University of Chicago Press, 2012 - annotated translation of libretto
translations of ‘The Huntsman’, ‘Grief’, ‘The Requiem’, ‘Fortune’, ‘Sweetheart’,
Anton Chekhov’s Selected Stories, Norton Critical Edition, ed. Cathy Popkin, Norton, 2014
editor and translator, Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, Oxford World’s Classics, 2014
available in cloth and paperback
‘...much the best English rendering which has ever appeared. (Yes, even better than the immortal Louise and Aylmer Maude). Her eye for detail never lets her down, whether she identifies wood cow-wheat or birch mushrooms in the rural bits of the book, or captures the breezy worldliness of the citified sections. Bartlett also offers a superb introduction - best thing ever written about the novel - and helpful notes. It is also a beautifully produced book.’ A. N. Wilson, Books of the Year, Times Literary Supplement
‘Bartlett, the author of a superb biography of Tolstoy, has produced a more classically elegant translation, which is mirrored in the book’s beautiful packaging, right down to the sewn-in ribbon bookmark. (Her introduction, a tour d’horizon of Tolstoy’s life and work, is also excellent)’, Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
‘Bartlett’s [version] seems to me as ecstatic as the Russian language feels,’ Bob Blaisdell, LA Times Book Review
‘Rosamund Bartlett's achievement is magnificent. In particular, her translations of the descriptive passages are miniature masterpieces. The translation is fresh and immediate, but with all the elegance and power of the original.’ Amy Mandelker, CUNY
‘Rosamund Bartlett’s riveting new translation of Anna Karenina brings the reader into Tolstoy’s many-faceted worlds with an immediacy, majesty and clarity that no other translator of this great novel has ever achieved.’ Robin Feuer-Miller, Brandeis University
“Tolstoy in Art and On Film”, OUPblog, 2016
“Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: A Woman’s Iliad?” OUPblog, 2014
discussion of Anna Karenina on BBC Radio 4, Woman’s Hour
editor and translator, Chekhov, About Love and Other Stories, Oxford World's Classics, 2004; 2008; shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, 2005
Chekhov, ‘Verochka’ and ‘Ionych’, New England Review, vol. 34, 3-4, 2014
